by Mick Farren
“Of course, the Mamaluke isn’t having any of this. He’s telling the innkeeper that his friend the severed head will be fine. All he needs is a drink. And since the Mamaluke by now has his hand on the hilt of his sword, the innkeeper decides it’s a good time to abandon logic and go along with the insanity, so he asks what the severed head is drinking. And the Mamaluke tells him that the head’s drinking arak, so the innkeeper pours a double shot of arak into one of those terra-cotta cups they use for liquor in Sebastopol and sticks it in front of the severed head. That sets the drunken Mamaluke off again, and he starts demanding how the fuck is the head going to drink when he doesn’t have any hands or arms?”
Plenty of liquor seemed to be available in the camp by the Potomac, but precious little food. All of Melchior’s best contacts were either searching for themselves or holding on to what provisions they had, and many were of the opinion that the general lack of supplies was more than just the usual Mosul foul-up, and that rations were being deliberately held back. Every one of them had a theory as to why this should be. Some thought it was deliberate profiteering, that a corrupt clique of officers, probably Teutons, expecting a hard and drawn-out fight with Albany, was secretly stockpiling food to make huge profits when winter came and the army could well be starving. Others saw it as a disciplinary measure, and that supplies would not be forthcoming until the wave of drunkenness had run its course. Melchior appeared to agree with the ones who saw the shortages as a sign that the push across the river was only weeks, maybe just days, away. A venerable, one-eyed musketeer claimed he had served under any number of bastard generals who cut off their men’s rations before an assault on the principle that starving men will do a lot if they think there’s a meal at the end of it. Theories, however, did not solve the immediate problem. The quartermasters were giving out next to nothing, while the black market was devoid of anything but homebrew and rotgut. Melchior freely admitted that theft might become a consideration. “We fight for the emperor, but we steal for ourselves.” While he kept up his stream of long-service tall tales, Raphael could see that he was not at all happy.
“At this point, our innkeeper has to be given an award for having some balls on him. He looks the Mamaluke straight in the eye, and he tells him, ‘I just pour the stuff. I don’t help nobody drink it.’”
“So what happened to him?”
“What happened to him, boy? Well, I’ll tell you. For a moment, all of us watching thought the Mamaluke was going to whip out his scimitar and cleave the poor bastard in two, but, instead, the Mamaluke starts laughing. And he goes on laughing and repeating what the innkeeper had said, ‘I just pour the stuff. I don’t help nobody drink it,’ while all the time he’s got the severed head and he’s pouring arak into its mouth. He throws down a bunch of money, and, still laughing, he takes the bottle from the bartender and goes right on pouring, still slopping arak into the mouth of the head as he stumbles out of the door and ceases to be our problem anymore, except for the trail he’s left of blood and arak.”
Raphael was at a loss to know how to respond to this, and his companions seemed the same. Seeing this, Melchior smiled. “If nothing else, it’s a lesson in how the direct approach can be the best way to deal with the mad, drunk, and homicidal.”
As they continued to walk, Raphael noticed that they had moved into a markedly different sector of the camp. The bivouacs were larger, more substantial, and better maintained. The streets were cleaner, better lit, and more sections of wooden sidewalk had been installed as protection against the ever-present mud. Seeing his charges were uneasy, Melchior explained. “We’re in officers’ country now, lads. Just walk like you’ve got a purpose, a reason for being here, and know what you’re doing. Pull that off, and you can get away with murder. If you look like you’re in the right place, you become invisible to officers. They assume you’re supposed to be where you are, and after that they don’t see you. If anyone stops us, let me do the talking.”
Raphael and the others had no intention of doing otherwise. Melchior had handled all the previous halts, checkpoints, and encounters with the military police and the Ministry of Virtue. Each time they had been stopped and quizzed as to what they might be doing, he had told what amounted to the truth, the only deception being that he phrased the story in a way that made their mission sound sanctioned and legitimate instead of at their own increasingly illegal initiative. Melchior was so plausibly confident and devoid of guilt, or even concern, that the MPs and the Ministry men seemed to buy what he said with only minimal questioning, and Raphael began to believe that maybe authority figures listened more to the tone of what was being said than the content.
They had been walking in “officers’ country” for maybe ten or fifteen minutes without finding anything too promising, and the recruits were becoming sufficiently accustomed to the sights and sounds of the camp to remember just how hungry they were. Raphael thought that very little was going to distract him from the rumbling of his disgruntled stomach, but then, as they were crossing an intersection, the sight of three very attractive women talking with a Teuton lieutenant was enough to remind him that, as long as he might have been without food, he had been out the company and even the sight of women very much longer, and these women were young and, to his eye, so stunningly desirable they set his impulses groaning. Then one of the women moved so her face was to the light. It was the girl from his dreams and his drawings, the one with red hair, whom he had previously seen manacled in the back of the truck on the highway, and then a second of the women half turned, and, to his open-mouthed amazement, she, too, was from his dream. He knew he was not mistaken, even though the presence of the two of them together made no sense at all, unless he was finally losing his mind and starting to hallucinate. He wanted to do something, to run to them, to blurt out to them that they had been in his dreams even before he had crossed the Northern Ocean, but enough of his vital grasp on the real world still remained for him to imagine how such an outburst would be received and what would happen to him when he was assumed to be nothing more than a lust-crazed madman. Yet Raphael had to do something; he could not just walk on regardless.
Unfortunately, that was exactly what Melchior and the other three were doing, until the underofficer turned and barked at Raphael. “Stop staring at the officers’ whores, Vega, if for no other reason than you’re making yourself obvious.”
“Is that what they are?”
“That’s what they are, lad, and, as such, absolutely no concern of yours.”
As Raphael caught up with the others, he looked around desperately. He saw a sign on a post. It simply read “RQ-38.” He supposed it was some kind of designation of this particular area of the camp. He would remember it, and, at the first chance he could find, he would slip away. He would ignore the possible consequences, do everything to find both this place and the women from his dreams.
ARGO
“We’re moving into a high-traffic area.”
“It’s the highway. The Continental Highway is the lifeline between Savannah and the front. They have it covered by constant patrols, minefields, killing zones, even Dark Things. The Mosul have all kinds of stuff for maybe a mile or more out from the road itself. Mainly it’s to catch their own deserters and any guerrillas from the mountains looking to mount an attack on the transports.”
“So what do we do from here on in?”
Hooker looked round with slow circumspection. “We proceed very, very carefully. We’re heading into the dark heart of the Mosul invasion.”
The Rangers rested in the shadow of a low rise beyond which the sky was lit by a dull orange glow and the stars were obscured by a dirty haze. They had been on the move since sunset, and it was now past midnight. Previously the night air had been clear, washed down by the recent rain, and Argo had looked up twice to see autumn shooting stars streak across a section of sky. The closer they came to the huge Mosul encampment by Alexandria, however, the more polluted the night became, and first hints drifted on
the breeze of the stench created by a combination of swampland, massed humanity, untreated sewage, belching vehicles, and thousands upon thousands of open fires. During a noticeably pungent waft, Argo had turned to Slide. “That’s got to be some damned camp.”
Slide had nodded. “You’ll more than likely see it all for yourself once we cross that ridge. I can’t remember much to rival it for sheer, disorganized size.”
Argo could find nothing to say to that. He still could not quite believe that he was not only marching with a band of Albany Rangers, but, in a matter of minutes, he’d be looking directly at the largest concentration of the invaders’ armored might in the Americas, bigger now than even the port of Savannah. And if that was not enough to boggle his mind, the fact that the huge hostile camp was going to be his eventual destination performed the stunning function. Slide had received the orders through the psychic link to Albany that most of the Rangers preferred not to think about. They were going in; a black-bag job in the heart of enemy darkness. With all of their considerable stealth, they were going to infiltrate the Mosul camp, rescue any survivors from the NU98, and either bring them home or destroy any and all salvaged parts of the airship. On the way out, they also had the option of causing all the collateral damage they could. Even the Rangers were a little daunted by the prospect of worming their way into such a density of the enemy. Steuben summed up the collective hesitation. “Ain’t that kinda like being ordered into hell to fuck the Devil’s wife while he ain’t looking?”
Madden did not see the problem. “Shit, Steub, it’s child’s play to get lost in a big place like that.”
Barnabas picked up the same theme. “Sure, Steub, it’s a piece of cake. Nobody knows anyone else, and they’re all milling around like wet hens, each new replacement trying to find his own ass.”
Hooker had not seemed so convinced that the task was either child’s play or a piece of cake, but he had his own solution. He smiled wickedly at Barnabas and Madden. “Since you two are so damned confident, go scout that ridge for me, will you?”
The pair shrugged, dropped their packs, hefted their weapons, and slipped into the night. As they moved out, Madden drew his knife. All the Rangers were good, but Madden and Barnabas were the squad’s masters of invisibility.
Argo wanted to demand how they thought he felt if a Ranger like Steuben had reservations about stealing into the Mosul camp, but he said nothing, partly to save face and partly because he didn’t think he had heard the whole story. In addition to the rescue of the NU98 survivors, he was sure that Slide, and maybe Albany, too, had more goals for this mission than just those that Slide had told to Hooker. He guessed that some of those plans might involve himself and the Lady Blakeney. This had all but been confirmed when his and Bonnie’s role in the operation had been discussed. Hooker had been all for leaving Bonnie and Argo behind and arranging a rendezvous location close to the river, where they could all reunite and then be transported across when the Rangers headed for home and safety, but Slide had overridden him. Bonnie and Argo would come along, but Slide was less than precise about what their function might be. He seemed to be expecting a lot to be taken on trust, and when Bonnie made no protest, Argo could hardly express any doubts about walking into the biggest Mosul camp on the continent. Bonnie’s attitude was that she was with the Rangers come what may, but Argo was certain that both Bonnie and Slide expected a new phase of their search for the rest of the mysterious Four to play out beside the Potomac.
That was, of course, if they made it to the river in the first place. Barnabas was back in a matter of minutes with news that cast a shadow of doubt over even that first objective. “We got Mosul, Captain.”
“Where?”
“Up on the ridgeline, a guard and two engineers manning a heliograph. They seem to have a regular little relay station set up. They’ve got a tent, cooking facilities, everything.”
“Are they still standing and blissfully ignorant?”
Barnabas nodded. “They act like they don’t know there’s a Ranger this side of the water. Madden was for cutting straight to the wetwork, but I told him it was your call.”
“Can they be laid down quietly and with no fuss?”
“They won’t know what hit them.”
“Then the two of you hit them, and let’s put the heliograph out of commission and move on.”
Slide drew the oriental sword from the sheath on his shoulder. “Wait, I’ll come with you. I want to see this heliograph for myself.”
Neither Hooker nor Barnabas made any objection, so, as Barnabas again vanished into the night, Slide followed. Once he had gone, Hooker glanced at Bonnie. “Yancey feeling the need to do some of his own killing?”
Bonnie was noncommittal. “Who knows with Slide?”
Hooker signaled to the rest of the squad to follow at a distance. The moon was up, brightening the hillside and complicating the approach, and he gestured in the Rangers’ own sign language for no sound and maximum caution. They rose like ghosts from the grass and advanced, weapons at the ready. Argo and Bonnie brought up the rear. Then, as the Rangers moved silently forward, the sound of a gasp and a brief scuffle told them that the element of surprise, and the blades of Madden, Barnabas, and Slide, had done their work. The main party reached the top of the rise to find the heliograph that Barnabas had described and Madden standing over two bodies. Closer inspection would reveal that the corpses’ throats had been cut from ear to ear. Slide, meanwhile, was pulling his sword from a collapsed, four-man ridge tent and wiping it clean on a loose fold of canvas. He had first sliced the guy ropes to drop the fabric of the tent on top of its occupant and then skewered him through it as he thrashed around helplessly in what was going to be his voluminous shroud. Even in his methods of death delivery, Slide made perverse choices. He was also so certain of his work that he simply sheathed his sword and walked away to inspect the heliograph without inspecting the body, commenting pedantically to no one in particular, “Hassan’s big problem is communication, and it will doom him in the end.”
He looked the twelve-feet-tall heliograph up and down. It was essentially a steel tower supporting a moveable mirror, capable of using reflected sunlight to send a dot-dash code to the next relay post down the long road to Savannah or the shorter distance up to the Potomac. He examined the polished steel, umbrellalike reflector that was at that moment folded back against a chance night wind, and then he leaned down to peer into the base of the device, where, cloaked in canvas against the weather, a heavy bank of nickle-iron batteries and an electric arc had been installed to make night transmission possible. “If they’ve got this thing set up on a permanent basis, it means that the telegraph stations along the highway are jammed with more messages than the lines can handle, and they’re using this junk as an even slower alternative.”
He straightened up and smiled sardonically. “The Zhaithan have such a holy fear of wireless technology, they’re going fuck everything up for Hassan. Which is good for us, except it pushes the vile and hunchbacked Quadaron-Ahrach further and further into the field of windwalking and talking on the dimensions.”
At which Bonnie chimed in, “And that’s where the next battle’s going to be fought, boys. In the nether places, with what you men-in-denial like to call the wiggy shit.”
She seemed about to deliver a post-incident lecture when she was interrupted by Barnabas. He had been pulling the canvas off whatever was inside the tent with the man that Slide had killed. Now he turned and spoke sharply to the others. “I don’t want to worry anyone, but there’s packs and bedrolls for four in here, and we’ve only got three stiffs.”
The Rangers froze. The ground was not secured after all. A possible lone enemy was on the loose. But where the fuck was he? Taking a shit, back at camp sick, or deserted two days ago? Or was he already running to raise the alarm? Weapons were leveled, and each Ranger turned slowly, but no one had an answer. The order to first establish a perimeter didn’t have to be given before the Rangers were doing exac
tly that, deploying spontaneously, in silent agreement, but already too late. The shot came out of nowhere. The surprised Mosul had probably fired in response to the Ranger’s sudden and deliberate moves. The canteens he was carrying, dropped at first sight of the enemy unit, would testify how he had been sent to get water from a stream at the bottom the rise and had been toiling back up when he spotted the Rangers before they spotted him. He had crouched down, probably hoping to creep away unseen., but then the Rangers had discovered him by his absence, and he must have decided to pick off at least one before he ran.
At the sound of the shot, everyone dropped into a crouch, except Bonnie who collapsed suddenly, like an unstrung doll. She was hit. The cry went up. “Bonnie down!”
Slide was instantly beside her. He ripped the glove from a skeletal right hand and felt her pulse. Then he let out a strange, soft howl that had to be one of rage and loss, and shook his head. “Bonnie is dead.”
While Argo reeled from shock, Slide was instantly on his feet. He looked directly at the fourth Mosul, seeing him immediately as he stood in the moonlight, desperately reloading his weapon, snapping cartridge and shot into the cumbersome breechloader. Slide’s sword was out in a single sweep, and he advanced on the man at an inhumanly fast gait. The Mosul could only be given a certain brutal credit that he did not simply come apart or turn and flee as a vengeful, angry, and grieving demon bore down on him with a naked blade. Instead, he went right on loading his rifle. He snapped the lock closed with what must have been critical relief. Slide was so close that the man did not even have to aim. He simply fired from the hip. Slide broke stride, staggered slightly as the bullet hit his body, but then swung his sword in a fearsome horizontal backhand stroke, like a Frank executioner, so the man’s head came cleanly off. Argo had never seen a man killed with a sword before, and shock collided with extra shock, plus an odd and hollow rejection of a vengeance that came so quickly behind Bonnie’s still-unaccepted death. But Slide was also shot, and he immediately proved that it was no superficial wound by sitting down abruptly on the grass in front of the spread-eagled body of the headless Mosul.
